Learning Sequences

Now we're ready for sequences of learning-games, the pragmatic business of putting these ideas into extended forms. I will give several examples, increasingly complex, and will follow each with some commentary. I think that all the principles involved in making these forms are quite general; but for the sake of clarity about their progression, it's useful to have all the examples deal with a single topic of learning, as these do. Many of the games have been discussed already, and I'll describe the others briefly in their places. I'll mention the individual phases of games and the game-game only when necessary. Space compels me to omit the rich details of the sequences' content, except as these bear on their processes.

[A cautionary note, 2008: Some implications of my descriptions below may seem confusing, unless one understands the context and certain problems of vocabulary. By 1969, the feminist ("Women’s Liberation") movement had emerged abruptly, engaging aware students on campuses throughout our land. Issues of gender-identity, gender-conditioning, gender-roles, and gender-equity were surfacing so rapidly as to overwhelm capacities to respond. This motivated students to seek learning which their colleges were not at all prepared to provide. Such learning was natural material for the many "free universities" of our student-initiated educational reform movement - and for our practices of learning-games - to engage. But the development of critical vocabulary was slower than the pace of this engagement. During these early years, we still spoke consistently of men and women as being of different "sexes" rather than of different "genders." In this light, what is couched below as inquiry into "sexuality" is more properly understood as inquiry into issues of gender roles, gender conditioning, etc.

Yet in offering this simple, clarifying correction, I must note also that the separation of gender and sexual (Eros) issues is not simple. Ancient traditions testify that the polar distinction of sexual-gender roles (e.g. Shiva/Shakti) is integral to expressions of sexual energy; and modern research is revealing biological landscapes too complex for simplistic ideologies to comprehend. In this light, there is perhaps a trace of truth remaining in our usage of "sexuality" then, and for the most part I have let this language stand unrevised.]